faith

I don’t know if I should write today.  I don’t want to inflict the pain I am feeling on other people.  It doesn’t seem fair.  It’s Sunday- God’s day.  Throngs of people are going to church and singing his praises and worshiping at the feet of God Almighty.  It is good and right.

I know there are others though, like me, who feel so lonely and abandoned.  Inconsolable and unreachable. Every time I have a bad day I think, this is at bad as it can get.  Yet another day comes and I realize I was wrong.  Yesterday I had the most intense pain and anxiety and hopelessness it wrapped around me like a boa constrictor.  I could not read songs or verses. They did nothing to loosen the grip. I truly lost hope.  I did not want to exist.  I want so deeply to be there for my family but I did not want to live.  I do not want to die and leave my children, husband, mother, father, sister…yet how I felt seems incompatible with life.  I will not give up though. God wants me to live. I know he loves me.

As I lay in bed in the afternoon yesterday I took sleeping pills and prayed God please let me sleep.  I lay there for hours, tortured.  Then a verse popped into my head.

What is faith?

“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”  Hebrews 11:1

I kept repeating it to myself over and over as I lay there tortured and gradually felt some peace creep in.  Little by little. Drop by drop.  Until I finally fell into blessed sleep.

Then I woke up this morning to these verses from my sister and instead of feeling inconsolable and unreachable I let it seep into my bones.

Ephesians 16:21

“I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸ may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹ and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

Christ will dwell in our hearts through faith. Even in the most utmost misery. When we can’t feel him. When we don’t know where to turn. He is able to do immeasurably more than we ask or imagine.